GeneralNews
Govt plans to give 2.5 crore mobile phones, 90 lakh tablets free Sep 7, 2013, 06.23 AM IST
The mobile phones will come bundled with free connection charges for two years. The user, who will have to pay a one-time charge of Rs 300, will also get 30 minutes of talk time, 30 text messages and 30 Mb of data usage free per month. This scheme will be restricted to the rural population.
CAG pulls up HRD Ministry on Aakash tablet project
Press Trust Of India : New Delhi, Fri Sep 06 2013
In its report tabled in Parliament, the government auditor observed that IITR had told the Ministry that around 90 per cent of the tablets supplied by Datawind between August and November 2011 were rejected by it due to complaints in the devices such as heating and they being slow.
"The Ministry decided to launch the Aakash through the IITR without ascertaining their capacity to undertake the work. This adversely affected the project delivery. It also placed Rs 47.42 crore at IITR disposal without carrying out a prudent assessment," it said.
‘We are talking more using fewer words’ September 3, 2013
PLSI is a rights-based movement, which sees language as crucial for the effective development of fragile communities and for stemming the erosion of India’s diverse, multilingual, and composite heritage.
Working with tribals on their languages at Bhasha since 1996 helped me realise that there was no need to unduly privilege scripts — even English does not have a unique script of its own. Hence the thought that most other languages are derivative forms of Scheduled languages disappeared from my mind. I started according smaller languages greater respect.
India is not chaotic. Studying patterns and seeing something traditionally Indian. Understanding the diversity of patterns. Published on Aug 23, 2013
Talks about the role of languages in a culture that is multi-dimensional, in addition to general discussion of chaos versus control
Mapping Digital Media: India A REPORT BY THE OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS 15 December 2012
The United Nations pointed out in 2010 that more Indians have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet, a fact confirmed by the latest official census. There are over 800 million mobile connections, although the number of unique users (excluding inactive connections) is estimated at around 600 million; the interesting thing about their usage pattern is that news alerts via SMS messages comprise the third most popular content accessed on mobile phones.
Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation by A. K. Ramanujan
The number of Ramayanas and the range of their influence in South and Southeast Asia over the past twenty-five hundred years or more are astonishing. Just a list of languages in which the Rama story is found makes one gasp: Annamese, Balinese, Bengali, Cambodian, Chinese, Gujarati, Javanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khotanese, Laotian, Malaysian, Marathi, Oriya, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Santali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan—to say nothing of Western languages. Through the centuries, some of these languages have hosted more than one telling of the Rama story. Sanskrit alone contains some twenty-five or more tellings belonging to various narrative genres (epics, kavyas or ornate poetic compositions, puranas or old mythological stories, and so forth). If we add plays, dance-dramas, and other performances, in both the classical and folk traditions, the number of Ramayanas grows even larger. To these must be added sculpture and bas-reliefs, mask plays, puppet plays and shadow plays, in all the many South and Southeast Asian cultures
